


Falling Sun

by Aurelia_Elysian



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mythology References, Wingfic, icarus - Freeform, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29036094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurelia_Elysian/pseuds/Aurelia_Elysian
Summary: “Was it so wrong,” Aziraphale says, softer than his feathers, stiller than the air, “for Icarus to want to touch the sun?”“Hubris, and all that.” Crowley nonchalantly flips his wrist, unfazed by the lack of segue.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Falling Sun

Crowley is a black speck upon the ground. Aziraphale doesn’t have to use his far reaching sight to know that he has done that thing again where his board straight body occupies maximum space on the grass without bending a single blade. Lately he seems to have taken to embellishing his most mundane tasks with details of the supernatural. Aziraphale also knows that he is wearing black on black, with black—silk lined—in defiance against the post noon sun. The sun, in turn, has beamingly obliged by baking his human form but Crowley likely feels just comfortably warm. He wears a white linen undershirt unbuttoned at the neck to show he is being casual. His shoes were polished minutes ago. 

Yet all these thoughts drift as small, loosely shaped orbs past the outskirts of the angel’s mind, not as pointed observations as they might have been. The upper air feels cool against his face, as Aziraphale slowly beats his vast wings again just to coax the clear briskness to wash over him as life-bearing water over a fish’s gills. His wing beats are intermittent. They’re not needed, not really—he can and does mainly hover by will alone. When he thinks, he almost draws his knees to his chest, just as his wings almost fold delicately against his back, and he sits in the pure air, completely at ease in his aerial suspension. 

Miles above him, Aziraphale flits about the clouds. Crowley very, very briefly wonders if he has broken past the atmosphere yet but he doesn’t open his eyes to check. Despite stubbornly not looking, he already knows Aziraphale has taken to his Neoclassical form: pale, living breathing sculpture, soft hair, sharp jawline, all that. Same grey eyes though. In other words, his brooding iconography (“Musing!” Aziraphale would usually correct indignantly). 

The famous angelic wings spread across the sky: immeasurable in span, frost-fall white stitched together with golden sun veins into feather shapes. Crowley twitches a shoulder out of reflex but it has been a long time since he has last felt the urge to allow his to unfold. (He flicks away a memory from over a millennia ago, when he had been far too obliging. “Oh! They are just as white,” the angel’s reverent gasp had ghosted over two of his feather tips. Crowley, for the first time, in surprise had bitten back his acerbic retort, “Well what else would they be?”) 

The angel’s flight becomes more erratic though. From graceful paths and lazy sweeps, they gradually transform into something more agitated, until Aziraphale skitters back and forth across the tiny orb of sun, casting and removing shadows over Crowley’s upturned face. Shadow, no shadow. Shadow, no shadow. Shadow--

“Angel.”

Aziraphale hears each chewed out syllable in Crowley’s quiet drawl and doesn’t even plummet straight down to earth as expected; he simply appears a few feet from him, flickering in midair as an ethereal being readily outstretched to bestow telling dreams. Crowley opens his eyes.

“Was it so wrong,” Aziraphale says, softer than his feathers, stiller than the air, “for Icarus to want to touch the sun?” 

“Hubris, and all that.” Crowley nonchalantly flips his wrist, unfazed by the lack of segue. It was so long ago, really, even by post modern standards, back when heathen gods existed to even be offended. 

Past his sunglasses, he finally tilts his head to actually look at Aziraphale, realizing he is hovering a mere human breath away. The sunlight bordering Aziraphale has naturally faded, if only to allow the angel’s own faint, silvery glow to emit. His chest noticeably heaves with labored breath for absolutely no good reason—the longest flight could never tire him; the day is far too ordinary for grief. Still, his face has grown unnaturally pale, his slightly bowed head drawing even more attention to the high flush of his cheeks. He beats his wings one last moment, pulling the air slowly in, then out, as a final breath, before releasing every feather to dissipate into a thousand dissolving flecks of light. 

Bound in his corporeal form, Crowley falters under the noticeable beating of his overly human heart. It flutters incessantly, in the allotted raw space in his chest and he suddenly aches, seeing Aziraphale’s unexplainable sorrow for an ancient name uttered only once amid centuries of legends. As he watches those lashes half draped over the familiar grey eyes, delicate and perfectly spaced as a dancer’s fan, Crowley desperately wants to surge forward and press his lips hard against the skin of Aziraphale’s temple, to feel the driving pulse under the rice paper thin skin. He would linger there, with the heat of Aziraphale’s life blood beating beneath him, until the angel’s infallible divinity shone through and seared at the darkness that dared try to taint him. And that harsh burning pain would be worth every warm pulse he had counted.

But why should Icarus matter, the boy hardly anyone knew or sang about in his own right. He was neither poet nor philosopher, no Romance youth at his artistic height snatched away by Pestilence before his time. No one would compose a memoriam for him. His only fame was in his father, too god-like in his works and ingenuity, whose craft caught a jealous king’s eyes. There, he could forever build until death projects great and small with every precious, rare material known to the olden world at his fingertip’s disposal, all within the tower of his fine marble cage.

“Don’t dare too high,” he had told his son, as he stared out his window at the sea port shores, as he saved each gull feather dropped one by one, as he stitched two sets of the precious plumes, as he leapt out into the sky. “My son, do not dare!” Too late, as Icarus touched the fire of the sky, as he burned, as he fell. 

“Is it so wrong, to want to be free?” Aziraphale whispers so quietly that Crowley leans forward a little too close. The angel remembers the bright joy on the boy’s face, swooping and hollering, the wind tangling his hair. First time without cages, guards, and fear. The last time, as the wax dripped down into the sea. 

“And to think, all those lonely desperate years could not have prepared him for the pain of losing everything on that one day.” After a long pause, Aziraphale finally continues, “I am not sure which pain was greater, that Daedalus would live on, knowing he could not save Icarus, or that I will too, knowing that I was not permitted.” 

Ah, thought Crowley, there it is then.

It wasn’t business as usual, a catastrophe striking and the lone angel unable to save them all. It had been one simple, meager life yet Aziraphale had still been commanded, _you may not save him_. 

In a fluid movement, Crowley springs up and loosely wraps his bony fingers around the angel’s wrist to give a brief tug. “Come on,” he says, “for old time’s sake,” and dropping Aziraphale’s limp arm, he takes a fraction of a moment to release his wings (which he chooses to keep transparent, just glimmering things hinting at wing shapes—no need to be flashy), before launching himself seamlessly into the air. He doesn’t glance behind him so he misses the surprise and faintest smile that war on Aziraphale’s face before he too takes a breath and jumps into the sky. Perhaps this time he would break past the atmosphere.

**Author's Note:**

> For a while I've had the imagery of Crowley lying on his back on the grass on a bright, bright day while Aziraphale in full angel form flies above him in the skies. I'm hardly an illustrator though so I decided to paint the scene with words instead. Thank you for reading!


End file.
